Cecilia Chiang Spills the Tea

The Kitchen Sisters Present

The Kitchen Sisters & Radiotopia

Society & Culture

4.6 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 17 December 2024

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On the occasion of her 80th birthday in 2000, The Kitchen Sisters, along with food writer Peggy Knickerbocker, visited the home of Cecilia Chiang, the legendary Chinese-American restaurateur, chef and founder of The Mandarin Restaurant in San Francisco for a bit of an oral history.

Cecilia Chiang introduced regional Chinese cooking to America in the 1960s, revolutionizing what most Americans thought Chinese cooking was. Elegant and savvy, her restaurant drew in celebrities and food enthusiasts, including Pavarotti, John Lennon, Jackie Onassis, Mae West, Henry Kissinger, and others. She inspired James Beard, Marion Cunningham, Alice Waters, Julia Child, and generations of chefs and restaurateurs, including her son Philip, founder of P. F. Chang's. Cecilia died in 2020 at the age of 100.

Transcript

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1:31.2	Cecilia Chang.
1:34.4	On the occasion of her 80th birthday in 2000,
1:38.2	the Kitchen Sisters, along with food writer Peggy Knickerbocker,
1:41.7	visited the home of Cecilia Chang,
1:43.5	the legendary Chinese-American
1:45.5	restaurateur and founder of the Mandarin restaurant in San Francisco for a bit of an oral history.
1:52.2	Cecilia Chang introduced regional Chinese cooking to America in the 1960s.
1:58.0	Inspired James Beard, Marion Cunningham, Alice Waters, and so many others. She died in
	...

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